Working Conversations

Episode 250: Make it Obvious: The Leadership Cost of Being Unclear In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of affordances and how it applies to leadership. Affordances make the next action or purpose of something obvious. Through everyday examples like doors, curb cuts, captions, and kitchen tools, she highlights the power of affordances. Dr. Janel shares three key ways leaders ca...

Episode 249: Better Leadership by Design In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the parallels between great user experience design and effective leadership. Drawing on principles from UX and situational leadership, she explains how leaders can optimize their approach by considering the specific context, task, and developmental stage of each employee. Rather than relying on a fixed leadership...

Episode 248: Leading Through Uncertainty: Three Bold Predictions for 2026 In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson shares her three bold predictions for 2026, focusing on the evolving landscape of leadership under uncertainty. She anticipates more frequent system outages in large cloud infrastructures, a greater need for partnerships with HR and legal teams as AI blurs the line between real and synthet...

Episode 247: Unleashing Your Creativity with The Artist’s Way In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the transformative power of Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way . She walks listeners through its process aimed at unlocking creativity and designing a more intentional life and work experience. From the discipline of daily morning pages to the joy of weekly artist dates, she shares practic...

Episode 246: Culture Redesign: Instagram Eliminates Meetings and PowerPoint In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson unpacks Instagram’s bold organizational redesign. Moving far beyond a simple return-to-office mandate, Instagram is canceling most meetings, ditching habitual PowerPoint use, and ramping up prototyping as a core driver of collaboration. Dr. Janel Anderson explores how these changes are d...

Episode 245: The Best Email I Ever Wrote (Just Three Sentences) In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson unpacks the art of crafting ultra-effective, ultra-brief emails that get rapid, thoughtful responses, even from the busiest executives. Sharing a real-life example from her executive coaching practice, she breaks down why her three-option, 10-second check-in email worked so well and how you can appl...

Episode 244: Late, Over-Budget, and Totally Worth It: Behind the Scenes on a Big Project In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson takes listeners behind the scenes of her recent website and demo reel project, sharing three powerful lessons learned along the way. From scrapping an entire first draft to making tough choices for the sake of clarity and working with exceptional partners, she outlines how p...

Episode 243: Embracing Healthy Disagreement for Stronger Teams and Sharper Decisions In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the strategic benefits of healthy disagreement in teams. Drawing on research and real-world examples from leaders like Jeff Bezos and experts in psychological safety, she highlights how thoughtfully managed disagreement leads to better decisions, sharper thinking, and s...

Episode 242: Master Microshifting: How Flexible Work Bursts Are Shaping the Workday In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of microshifting—breaking the traditional workday into flexible bursts tailored to individual energy cycles and life demands. She explains how microshifting emerged from post-pandemic work trends and highlights its benefits, such as improved well-being, auton...

Episode 241: Adapting to Unannounced Change In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores how rapid, unannounced changes in technology—like unexpected software redesigns—can create frustration even among those who embrace innovation. Drawing on her own volatile experiences with changes in her bookkeeping and email software, she highlights the importance of key design heuristics: visibility, consist...

Episode 240: How Big is Too Big? What the AWS Outage Can Teach Us In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the ripple effects of a major AWS outage and the hidden infrastructure our digital lives depend on. She shares real-world examples of how a single system failure can halt food delivery apps, smart devices, company tools, and even government services. Through the lens of “normal accident t...

Episode 239: Hybrid Work Needs a Redesign In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson tackles hybrid work and why it isn’t delivering on promises of flexibility, connection, and productivity. Drawing on research and real-world conversations, she highlights the three core challenges—missing personal relationships, workspaces that hinder collaboration, and meetings that fall short. Dr. Janel offers nine pra...

Episode 238: Garbage In, Garbage Out – Now with AI In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of “workslop”, the new term that refers to the low-quality, AI-generated work that lands in our inboxes and diminishes trust and productivity. Drawing on recent research and her own experiences, she explains why workslop is fundamentally a design problem rooted in skipping over empathy, cont...

Episode 237: It’s not Job Hugging – it’s Desperate Clinging In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson tackles the trending phenomenon of “job hugging,” a term she finds deeply misleading. She unpacks why so many employees are clinging to jobs out of economic fear, not affection, and highlights the costly impact of disengagement on both organizations and individuals. Dr. Janel argues for calling this beh...

Episode 236: How to Avoid Micromanaging In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of micromanaging through both personal and professional lenses. Drawing from a kitchen mishap with her son and her extensive management experience, she explains the usability principle of user control and freedom—and why it matters at work. Dr. Janel outlines three actionable strategies for leaders: se...

Episode 235: Meeting Strangers on the Internet – AKA Networking In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores how to make networking feel authentic, intuitive, and effortless by applying UX thinking and the principle of consistency in standards. She shares her own networking conventions across platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, emphasizing the importance of being genuine, following up on promis...

Episode 234: Difficult Conversations Simplified In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of “kitchen sink conversations”—those difficult discussions where multiple unrelated grievances get thrown together and nothing gets resolved. Drawing on principles of minimalist design, she offers practical strategies for keeping workplace (and even household) conversations focused, productive...

Episode 233: Timing Is Everything: How to Make Big Changes Stick In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the power of timing when launching new projects, habits, or organizational changes. Drawing on recent research about CEO transitions, she explains why aligning change with natural cycles—like the start of a new year or quarter—leads to more successful, less disruptive outcomes. Using user...

Episode 232: Beat Workplace Overwhelm with UX Thinking In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson tackles the challenge of workplace overwhelm caused by competing priorities and shifting demands. Drawing from cognitive load theory and UX thinking, she explains the difference between volume and complexity of work, and shares practical tools—including card sorting and the Eisenhower matrix—to help listener...

Episode 231: The Real Reason Employees Quit and How to Fix It In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores why high-performing employees leave organizations—not due to burnout or pay, but because of gaps in their workplace experience. Drawing on design thinking principles, she introduces three key heuristics—visibility into the system state, error prevention, and minimalist design—to help leaders...

Episode 230: Innovation by Design: Lessons from Airbnb In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson unpacks the myth of innovation as a lightning-bolt moment and reveals the deliberate design behind truly innovative ideas. Using the story of Airbnb as a case study, she explores how innovation thrives through a structured process involving Personas, Divergent Thinking, and Storyboarding. Dr. Janel draws pra...

Episode 229: Why Planning Fails – and What to Do Instead In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores why traditional planning no longer works in today’s unpredictable environment and advocates for a shift toward design thinking in leadership. Drawing from her keynote, she illustrates how prototyping, feedback loops, and iterative design help leaders adapt amid constant change. Through practical e...

Episode 228: Chunking Change: A Smarter Way to Lead Through Innovation In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores how software teams can drive innovation without burning out their people. Sharing the story of a team struggling to integrate AI into their core product, she delves into the concept of “chunking” from UX design—breaking down big changes into smaller, manageable micro-cycles. By movin...

Episode 227: Fix Miscommunication with UX Thinking In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores how slowing down to create a shared language can boost team efficiency and effectiveness. Drawing from UX design principles like “speaking the user’s language,” she illustrates how clarifying terms and aligning definitions reduces friction, miscommunication, and cognitive load within organizations. Dr....

Episode 226: Powerful Paradigm Shifts Can Change How We Lead In this episode, Dr. Janel Anderson explores the concept of paradigm shifts and how they radically transform the way we see the world. She shares both personal and organizational examples, from learning not to believe everything you think to embracing a growth mindset, challenging industry assumptions, and responding proactively to marke...